Radislav Krstic in the courtroom in The Hague. Photo: EPA/PAUL VREEKER.
The Bosnian state-level court on Wednesday confirmed the indictment of Radislav Krstic, former Bosnian Serb Army Drina Corps commander, who is serving a 35-year sentence in Estonia for genocide.
The Prosecutor’s Office charged him in an indictment raised on December 29 with participating, as commander of the 2nd Romanija Motorised Brigade, in a joint criminal enterprise and an attack on the village of Novoseoci in September 1992, as part of a systematic attack by the Bosnian Serb Army and the Republika Srpska police against the Bosniak population in the Sokolac area.
“After the attack, the women and children were separated from the men, and the captured men were transported by military trucks to a rubbish dump at the Ivan Polje site, where they were shot and killed with firearms,” a statement from the Prosecutor’s Office said.
During the crime, the Prosecutor’s Office said, property was looted and destroyed. The local mosque was demolished and its rubble dumped on the victims’ bodies at a local landfill.
“At this location, 44 victims were killed, the youngest of whom was 14 and the oldest 77. The bodies of 43 victims have been exhumed and found, while the remains of one victim are still being searched for,” the statement added.
The wartime Drina Corps commander was sentenced by the Hague Tribunal to 35 years in prison for aiding and abetting the genocide in Srebrenica under a final verdict in 2004, and then sent to Britain to serve his sentence.
However, he was returned to The Hague after being attacked in prison in the UK, and then sent to Estonia to serve the rest of his jail time. but has repeatedly been denied early release by the UN court.
Krstic’s new indictment has raised questions about how he will be processed considering he is already serving a prison sentence for his role in the Srebrenica genocide of July 1995, when more than 8,000 men and boys were killed. The court did not explain how it plans to proceed.
Retired state court judge Azra Miletic questioned the value of the indictment.
“I don’t see how meaningful it is now, when we already have a man sentenced to a long prison term for the most serious crime. I don’t know what they didn’t know about him before. The Hague must have investigated everything connected to him,” Miletic told BIRN.
Krstic has filed several requests for early release in recent year, all of which were denied. At the end of 2024, Krstic admitted his role in the Srebrenica genocide and accepted the court verdict.